Mavericks’ Calendar app has truly done away with the need for a paper calendar. Offering colour-coded calendars, Quick Events and integration with iCloud, Yahoo, Gmail and Outlook, to name but a few sources, it has an ace up its sleeve – Shared Calendars. With Shared Calendars you can quickly and easily keep your friends and family in the loop of where you plan to be and when – perfect if you’re a parent and need to keep your partner up to date with all the family appointments.

Shared Calendars are easy to set up and customise, and we’re going to show you how to master this useful feature in a matter of minutes. All you need to get started is an iCloud account and a Mac running OS X Mavericks – you can upgrade for free in the App Store.

Step-by-step: Set up and master Shared Calendars

1 Share a calendar

Launch the Calendar app and hover over the calendar that you would like to share. A broadcasting icon will appear to the right of the calendar’s name. Click on the broadcasting icon.

2 Invite a friend

A pop-out box will appear that will prompt you to enter the contact name (if the person has an assigned contact card in the Contacts app) or alternatively, their email address.

3 Add multiple invites

You can share your calendar with more than one person – just separate each name or email with a comma. Want to make your calendar public? Place a tick in the Public Calendar box.

4 View sharing options

Press Done. The broadcasting icon will now be permanently illuminated next to your calendar. Click the broadcasting icon again to access further sharing options.

5 Take full control

In the pop-out box, you can control who has access to your calendar and what level of access they have to your calendar. Click the drop-down beside an invitee’s name to manage their access.

6 Amend invitee access

There are two levels of access: View & Edit and View Only. When an invitee has View & Edit access, they can add/remove events to the calendar and edit existing events.

7 Enable View Only

By default, Calendar offers View & Edit access to all invitees. To change this access to View Only, click on the option labelled View Only. You can change an invitee’s access level at any time.

8 Invite more friends

To invite another person, type their name or email address in the blank area of the ‘Share [Calendar name] with’ field. Once accepted, a green tick will appear next to their name.

9 Stop Calendar Sharing

To stop an invitee viewing your calendar, select their name and press the Backspace key. To stop sharing the calendar, right-click on the calendar and select Stop Sharing from the drop-down.